Lt. Col. James "Flipper" Kromberg of the U.S. Air Force became the first military service pilot to evaluate the F-35 Lightning II, taking the aircraft through a series of maneuvers Wednesday on its 26th flight.

Kromberg took off from Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth plant at 11:54 a.m. CST, flew the plane to 6,000 feet and checked handling qualities at 15-degrees angle of attack. He then climbed to 10,000 and 12,000 feet assessing the up-and-away flight-control response. Kromberg also tested the F-35's engine performance and formation-flying characteristics.

"The aircraft flew very well, exceeding my expectations," Kromberg said. "I was surprised by the amount of power on the takeoff roll. And the handling, particularly with the gear up, was phenomenal.

For the first time ever, NASA will beam a song -- The Beatles' "Across the Universe" -- directly into deep space at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4.

The transmission over NASA's Deep Space Network will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings. Two other anniversaries also are being honored: The launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, and the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that supports missions to explore the universe.

The transmission is being aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is located 431 light years away from Earth. The song will travel across the universe at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney expressed excitement that the tune, which was principally written by fellow Beatle John Lennon, was being beamed into the cosmos.

You can't pick up a newspaper or a magazine without someone discussing the obesity epidemic. According to the CDC, in 2006, only four states had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%.

It's no different in Europe. Last week, the UK health secretary declared an obesity epidemic, but does the evidence really stack up? Researchers in this week’s British Medical Journal debated the issue.

Claims about an obesity epidemic often exceed the scientific evidence and mistakenly suggest an unjustified degree of certainty, argue Patrick Basham and John Luik.

But Robert Jeffery and Nancy Sherwood argue that a large body of scientific evidence shows that obesity is a major global health problem.

Gout, or metabolic arthritis, was considered by Hippocrates “the disease of kings” because only wealthy people with rich diets got it. This was true until the early 20th century when cases went down because of improved knowledge about it.

But in the last 40 years, cases have gone up, mostly because now everyone can afford rich and sugar-filled treats. Gout affects 3 times as many men as women and an estimated 5.1 million people in the United States live with it.

It is caused by excess uric acid in the blood (hyperuricaemia) which leads to uric acid crystals collecting around the joints. There are a number of factors that contribute to the disease but consumption of sugar sweetened soft drinks and fructose is strongly associated with an increased risk of gout in men, finds a study published in BMJ.

WORCESTER, Massachusetts, February 1 /PRNewswire/ --

- ENDORSE Global Findings Highlight the Need to Urgently Implement Hospital-Wide Strategies to Optimize VTE Management: Systematically Assess Patient Risk for VTE and Provide Appropriate Prophylaxis to Prevent VTE

ENDORSE multinational study (Epidemiologic International Day for the Evaluation of Patients at Risk for Venous Thromboembolism in the Acute Hospital Care Setting) published today in the LANCET(1) demonstrates the high prevalence of patients at risk for VTE (according to the ACCP guidelines) in the world: 52% of hospitalized patients surveyed were at risk for VTE, corresponding to 64% of surgical patients and 42% of medical patients.

LONDON, February 1 /PRNewswire/ --

- With Over 1,500 Google Searches on Gastric Band Surgery Performed Each Month in UK, This new Online Resource Plugs the 'Information gap'

Today saw the launch of an innovative new website http://www.loseweightgainlife.co.uk which provides clear information and support to people considering obesity surgery. To coincide with the launch of the website, findings from a new survey reveal widespread confusion over the causes of obesity in the UK with nearly 8 in 10 people (79%) believing obesity is caused purely by 'lifestyle choices', rather than being a serious medical condition, and 50% also associating the condition with 'greediness'.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) evaluates research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies using the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), a set of questions that asks agencies about many aspects of their programs, including whether they can measure and demonstrate annual improvements in efficiency.

Based on the answers, OMB rates research programs as effective, ineffective, or somewhere in between. An "ineffective" rating can have serious adverse consequences for a program or agency. After experiencing difficulty meeting OMB's requirements to demonstrate the efficiency of its research programs, EPA asked a National Research Council committee for guidance on how to measure efficiency.

As large, visually-oriented mammals, we have long had a tendency to consider biological diversity primarily in terms of what we can see. There is, however, an entire world of creatures rarely encountered but no less unique and intriguing for it. Sometimes, one only needs the right tools, or the proper motivation, to recognize a group of organisms well worth our attention.

It is in this spirit that I am pleased to introduce you to Hypsibius dujardini, one of about 700 known species in the Phylum Tardigrada, commonly known as a "water bears" due to their ursine appearance.

The Rocky Mountains have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The snowpack in the Sierras has dwindled by 20 percent and the temperatures there have heated up by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

All could lead to dire consequences for the water supply in the Western United States, including California. Scientists have noted that water flow in the West has decreased for the last 20 to 30 years, but had never explained why it was happening.

Until now. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison in collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography have pinpointed the cause of that diminishing water flow on a regional scale: humans.

In the US, most deaths are attributable to chronic afflictions, such as heart disease and cancer. Typically the medical community has attributed these diseases to accumulated damage, such as plaque formation in arteries or mutations in genes controlling cellular replication. This view is changing. Scientists are now beginning to recognize that many of these chronic illnesses are due to microbial infections.